The Fastest Builder In Town

Mysteriously unmanned.

They hid the sites behind branded, light blue scaffold covering, like everyone, though theirs was superfluous for much longer. A marketing exercise, I suspect. I’d been seeing them around in the midst of a growth period for the housing market — a period that never seems to end in this country— and I was curious and I started skipping regular beats to keep an eye on their new developments.

The guys that let the trucks in, the trucks that filled the roads all day headed both in and out, were suspicious of me and at least one of them came to recognise my car. They never sent me off but they did watch me carefully, closing the angled entrances through which men and goods arrived. The few of those men—those guards—that they had appear in most of my photographs. Every so often, the frontages are empty in my pictures. I never got a good shot inside.

So I gave it a rest for a time. Wrote stories that were more pressing, like local store openings, feel-good charity pieces, and some half-hearted crime pieces. You know, the things that fill small sections of the papers between breaking news and scandals. Someone has to write them and our quotas are aggressive. In this way months passed and I kept some distance between myself and the sites and when I’d done the dirty work enough to push for my own commission, I chose them. My editor said yes. So I went back.

On foot, this time, passing them on their side of the road, as close as the bunting would allow, trying to peer in through the bright Brisbane sun pushing through the light blue screen but the pinholes yielded few secrets. One of the doormen recognised me up close too, judging by the look, and when I said, “Hello,” he simply said, “G’day,” and invited me to keep passing by.

Despite the hand pointed flat in the direction of what would have been the rest of my walk, I didn’t take the doorman’s invitation.

“Hi,” I repeated, more uncertain of what next than I’d have liked.

“How can I help, mate?” He said it, not asked it.

“I’ve noticed you across town,” I began.

“I’ve noticed you noticing,” he said. He pulled the long, tall fence further closed behind him. “What’re you doing?”

“I’m not spying if that’s what you mean. I’m a journalist. With the local Times.”

“You wrote the rag on the Salvos a few weeks back, yea?”

“Yea.” I did. He knew my name.

“You look like your name. A nice piece. Easy search.”

“I’m not trying to hide.”

“I noticed.”

“You’re good at that.”

“Whaddaya want? A story? I ain’t much.”

“You might not be, but I suspect that what’s behind you is.”

“That’s private.”

“How private?”

“You got an angle?”

“I do.”

“What do we get out of it?”

It would be the kind of coverage you couldn’t buy — well, you could, with the right advertorial budget — and I would be straddling a fine line if I found anything worthy of praise.

“Depends if it’s good. How do you make the fastest homes in town?”

“A simple process.”

“Can’t be. Or everyone else would have it too.”

“We’ve a more… scientific process.”

I took a small notepad from my back pocket. A pen from my front pocket.

“Do you mind if I—?”

“Only if it’s good. Actually, tell you what. I’ll help you write it real fast. C’mere.”

He pushed the fence back ajar. “C’mon.”

My approach cautious. Trying to peer around and behind him into the site first. I would hate to find children upon the scaffolds, working hard and fast for iceblocks or rollups or similar as their secret. Not scientific like he said though. And I was inclined, somehow, to believe him.

“Are you allowed?”

“I own the place.”

The fence some more ajar. The doorman looking out to the street, hesitant to give away the secrets just yet, slowly contenting himself with its empty, midday quiet, the fence opening more as I approached and the site revealing itself to be…

frozen.

Before I knew it I was beyond the fence, drawn in by the spectacle, the doormen closing it behind with the soft click of a lock, standing at arms, hands crossed in front of him, still as I watched.

Bricks and pylons and steel floating about me. Concrete pouring and pouring and pouring and not pooling, not spreading. The loose shape of a wall nearby. A front door open off the ground in an unmade frame.

I stepped forward and the door frame came into place, the wood sliding it from elsewhere. The site uncrewed. Another step and a pallet in the corner emptying. The air rough to breathe with the dust always unsettled. More steps and more progress, the front of the new home coming together itself as I approached. A small flight of stairs materialising before a deck being built as I walked over it. The front door firm and solid as I gripped its tall silver handle and pushed and even as I could see through the walls not yet built about me when I opened the door the interiors were clear and clean. Tiles and downlights and marble benchtops in the distance.

I turned to the doorman by the fence.

Stepped back towards him. A panel of the deck pulled back away.

The doorman smiling. He approached. Made his way past me and into the inside of the house, furniture placing itself, the mood lifting, the air thin.

“How?” I asked, uncarefully, curiosity overpowering whatever reverence I had for whatever strength was constructing a home before my eyes.

The doorman just walked on to the middle of the home. By then everything felt in place. Purpose-built. Ready to receive whoever would live here.

The scaffolding for this site had appeared overnight. The house apparently manifested into shape and into place.

“What are you thinking for a headline?”

My idea was: The Fastest Builder In Town. I told him so. And he laughed.

“That works. But it’s not quite ready. And I don’t suspect you’ll be able to describe the process.”

“Nor do I.”

“It takes the family to live in it before it all settles. That first small piece of love.”

“What about unhappy families?”

“We vet our prospective buyers heavily. We learned early to avoid collapses because they’re… comprehensive.”

“I can imagine.”

“C’mon,” the doorman said, “let’s head back. This is as finished as it’ll get for you and I.”

He led the way out. I followed quickly lest it all dissipate with me inside.

Even as I watched the house unmake as I passed back towards the edge of the scaffolding I couldn’t believe it. I suspect the doorman only let me in because he knew that would happen. An unwritable piece. Unpublishable anyway. How do they do it? I don’t know. No one wants to read that.

I found myself quickly back on the roadside, the doorman staying inside the fence as he closed it again. “Anything else?”

My notepad empty.

“… yes?”

He laughed.

“If you have any questions, come and find me.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know.”

And he closed the fence behind me. It was all I could do to wander off and wonder, barely noticing that I’d put half the city between me and the site before I really had a chance to put into half-thought sentences that eluded any effort to get them onto the page. What would I tell my editor?

I went back home late that afternoon and I wrote into the evening and filed two unremarkable, unrelated stories that were close to deadline. Of course I had plenty of questions.

But I never saw the doorman, or the other doormen, or that light blue scaffold covering in town every again.

Though I did hear they’ve opened recently in Wiltshire.

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